Date: Friday, August 22, 2014
Venue: City Winery (NY)
Concert Review by Joe Yanosik
Photo by Joe Yanosik
It was a packed house on the evening of August 22 at the City Winery for the second night of legendary L.A. punk band X‘s 4-night run at the Soho establishment. Young punks, old fans and foodies all came together for wine, dinner and song. I arrived around 7:00 pm in time to have an excellent burger and a glass of Cabernet while the venue played Elvis and Carl Perkins music before the band came on stage promptly at 8:00 pm, looking very similar to how they looked (can it be) 30 years ago, with the only major differences being singer Exene Cervenka‘s added pounds and guitarist Billy Zoom‘s reading glasses (so he can see the frets on his guitar I’d imagine). But drummer DJ Bonebrake and singer-bassist John Doe looked almost indistinguishable from their heyday in the early 80s when their unique west coast hippie punk band enthralled fans and critics alike with one great album after another: their four-album run from 1980’s Los Angeles and 1981’s Wild Gift (both produced by ex-Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek) to 1982’s Under the Big Black Sun and 1983’s More Fun in the New World ranks up there with the other great punk album runs from the Ramones, the Clash and Sleater-Kinney.
(Watch whole film documentary X: The Unheard Music here: http://youtu.be/d8AHW4I_WO0)
X was formed in 1977 by Zoom and Doe, with Doe’s then-girlfriend poet Cervenka and finally drummer Bonebrake completing the lineup. Zoom, who is an average of seven years older than the rest of the band members, was already a veteran on the scene by 1977, having played with Gene Vincent’s classic rockabilly band.
Photo by Joe Yanosik
X was heavily influenced by the first wave of punk rock, as well as their hometown “poet laureate of the underground” Charles Bukowski and, importantly, Doe and Zoom’s love and knowledge of roots and rockabilly music. Doe and Cervenka co-wrote their lyrics and traded or shared untrained but impassioned vocals which, along with Zoom’s guitar, remains the band’s sonic signature. After releasing an impressive catalog of seven studio albums from 1980 to 1993, the band retired in the early 90s until resuming activity about 10 years ago and they have been touring sporadically since then.
For their current City Winery run, X is playing each of their first four albums in full, start to finish. As much as I love their debut Los Angeles , which they played Thursday night, I’ve always preferred 1981’s Wild Gift. In fact, it’s one of my favorite rock albums of all time. So I chose to attend last night, and I’m glad I did. I had seen X once before – earlier this year, in fact, when they opened for Blondie – and they had played a handful of songs from Wild Gift.
But every single song on that album is fantastic so what a thrill it was to hear one of my fave LPs played in its entirety – live and sounding as good as ever. Legendary rock critic Robert Christgau once reviewed Wild Gift saying “how often do we get a great love album and a great punk album in the same package?” Lyrically, the songs run the gamut from Bohemia to Catholic guilt to unrequited love to universal love to hangovers to destroy-your-old-icons and more. Musically, it’s all about Zoom’s guitar running rampant through power chords, lightning riffs and rockabilly fills, while Doe and Bonebrake valiantly keep up with him, and Doe and Cervenka’s dissonant vocals filling in the gaps. DJ Bonebrake is a fantastic drummer and the presence of two of punk’s greatest musicians (Zoom and Bonebrake) in this band should not be overlooked.
X raced through this fantastic set of 13 brief songs in less than 40 minutes, and then took a short break and came back to kick the show up a notch. As impressive as the Wild Gift sequence was, I must admit I enjoyed the second set even more, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just a result of that second glass of Cabernet either. The album set behind them, the band seemed to loosen up and proceeded to play another dozen or so songs from their entire catalog: “The Hungry Wolf” featuring a rocking drum solo by DJ Bonebrake, a few of their classic covers – Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Breathless”, the Doors’ “Soul Kitchen”, and the Tin Pan Alley chestnut “Dancing With Tears in My Eyes”, nuggets from Los Angeles that I was hoping they’d play (“Johnny Hit and Run Paulene” and a ferocious “Nauseau)”, a terrific “How I Learned My Lesson” and a three-song encore of “The World’s a Mess, It’s in My Kiss”, “New Spark” and “Devil Dog”, which had the audience out of their seats.
The evening ended with Zoom handing his axe to Exene who unleashed a minute’s worth of impressive guitar feedback to gift-wrap this unforgettable wild night for us all.
